


Peer Pressure

by LinksLipsSinkShips



Series: Kink Kiss Kill 2020 [2]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Fluff, Hickies, High School, Kinktober 2020, M/M, this ended up being really fluffy for a kinktober prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinksLipsSinkShips/pseuds/LinksLipsSinkShips
Summary: Mark Goodwin has a hickey. The hickey is notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, this is Mark Goodwin’s first hickey ever. Second of all, Link is now the only guy on the team who has never had one. As everyone high-fives Mark, Link is painfully aware of that fact.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Series: Kink Kiss Kill 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948897
Comments: 22
Kudos: 55





	Peer Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> This is under the "kinktober" category as it is based on a kinktober prompt for "hickies." However, there isn't any kink in this. It's fluffy. Promise.

Mark Goodwin has a hickey. The hickey is notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, this is Mark Goodwin’s first hickey ever. Second of all, Link is now the only guy on the team who has never had one. As everyone high-fives Mark, Link is painfully aware of that fact.

“Popped the big makeout cherry!” Dan Perkins says, cheering for Mark. “How’d it feel?”

“Great, man,” Mark says. He’s, of course, ecstatic. Which leaves eyes on Link. “Looks like you’re the last one.” Mark pointing that out doesn’t help. Link’s cheeks turn bright red; he can feel the heat in them. He’s right, though. Link is the only guy who hasn’t had one, and he feels frustrated with the whole situation. It’s all complicated.

He doesn’t have a girlfriend, not one he can go that far with. And the girls he’s interested in? He couldn’t see himself progressing that far, not anytime soon.

“So who’s the lucky lady?” Daniel asks Mark, because the thing is, Mark doesn’t have a girlfriend either. Link wonders who he got the hickey from, what changed for him, how he managed.

Mark shrugs. “Just some babe from out of town,” he says. He’s non-committal about it. “She’s in college.” That only gets him more high-fives from the other guys. Link gives the obligatory nod of approval and turns back to his locker, still blushing with embarrassment.

On his way home from school, Link starts to think about the whole situation. Apparently, all he needs is a hickey. He doesn’t even have to have a girl to go along with it. Mark didn’t, and no one questioned him.

Link can’t get it out of his head. Not during the walk home, not when Rhett comes over after school to study before their science test. “What’s up?” Rhett asks him.

“Nothing,” Link says. He shrugs, but his mind is still on the hickey, on Mark and the college girl he got it from. “You think I could get a girl to give me a hickey? Like a college girl?”

Rhett snorts. “You think a college girl is going to give you—a sophomore—a hickey?” He couldn’t stop laughing, and Link blushed, looking away. “Dude, you’d be better off just faking one. Is this about Mark?”

Link shrugs. Yeah, it’s about Mark. And every single other guy on the team. He’s the odd man out and with no prospects, it’s going to stay that way. “How would I even fake one?”

“Dunno, man,” Rhett says, flipping to the page they’re supposed to be on. “But I bet Mark faked his.”

Word must be spreading fast around the school if it’s reached the basketball team, Link thinks, and it’s only a matter of time before word spreads about him too, before people know he’s the only one who hasn’t made out with a chick long enough to get marks on his neck. He never thought the pressure would be this intense, but the more he waits, the more it starts to get to him.

And three days later, Dan’s asking him about it. “You got a girl yet, Neal?”

Link just shrugs, sticking his backpack in his locker. If he says no, he doesn’t have a girl, then a hickey would come out of nowhere. If he says yes, the pressure is on for him to find one fast. He can’t answer either one of those directions. “I’ve got some prospects,” Link answers. It’s non-committal.

“Cool. Bet you’re next in line,” he says. “Would be a shame if one of the guys got a new set of marks before you even get your first.”

Link scowled as he got into his mom’s car after school. “What’s wrong?” she asked him. But he couldn’t tell her the truth. What was wrong? He didn’t have a girl to suck pretty lip-shaped bruises onto his neck, so he could be just like every single other guy on the team. She’d never accept that.

The next day, he still hadn’t come up with a solution. “I heard Rachel’s was a curling iron burn, not a hickey.” Sarah Nelson was giggling with a friend a few lockers down from his, idle gossip. A curling iron. That could work. The idea sounds painful, the thought of turning on his mother’s curling iron and putting it against his neck. But if it’s effective, maybe it’s worth trying. He wonders what would hurt worse: a burn, or the sting of the other guys scrutinizing him.

By the day after that, the pressure is  _ really  _ on, because Mark shows up with two new hickies, this time on the other side of his neck. Mark’s gotten more, and Link hasn’t gotten any, just like Dan said would happen.

“What if you try a vacuum?” Rhett asks, walking home from school beside Link, backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Yeah, okay. I could try that.” Link nods. A vacuum sounds like it hurts way less than a curling iron would. The process seems simple… like one just needs enough suction and it’ll work. When he gets home, he pulls the vacuum cleaner out of the linen closet at the end of the hall and looks at the assortment of hoses and attachments. “Which one?” he asks Rhett.

“Uh, that one.” Rhett selects one that isn’t quite so round, an attachment for curtains, and Link puts it onto the vacuum, holding it up to his neck and reaching for the button. “Wait!” Rhett yelps.

“What?”

“Maybe you should try it somewhere else and make sure it’ll leave the right imprint,” Rhett tells him.

Link considers this, and then lifts his shirt, pressing it to the side of his stomach, near his hip. “Here?”

“Yeah,” Rhett says, flipping the vacuum on.

It sucks, pulling Link’s skin into it. It almost hurts, but it doesn’t really hurt, and Link can’t describe how weird the sensation is. “How long do I leave it here?” he asks.

“I don’t know!” Rhett calls over the sound of the vacuum. “A minute or two?”

Link leaves the vacuum on until it starts to stink, sitting in one place for too long and overheating. He turns it off, pulling the vacuum hose off and looking.

Rhett cackles. “Yeah, there’s no way in heck anybody is going to believe that.”

The size of it is all wrong, too long for a mouth, and the shape too defined to be what he needs. No one will believe the vacuum mark is a hickey. “I guess I could try the curling iron?” Link’s voice wavers. He really doesn’t want to burn his neck just to fit in. He can’t think of another option, though, another way to make the mark he’s after.

“I could help you,” Rhett offers.

“Help how? You gonna do it so I don’t burn myself too much?” Link asks. That might actually work. Then Link won’t accidentally mess it up.

“No, like… I could give you one. And then if I need one sometime and I don’t have a girl, you can return the favor,” he says. “All it takes is like, a minute or two of suction, right? I could do that.”

Link studies him. “Stop messing with me, man!” he yelps. He doesn’t want to be laughed at by the team, but it’s even worse when his best friend starts to mess with him too.

“I’m not messing with you. I’m serious. If you need a hickey, I’ve got lips and suction and stuff. I’ve got everything you need for it,” he says. “You want me to?”

Rhett doing this is arguably better than getting a burn all over his neck. He nods. “Okay, sure.” He’s not sure how they’re planning on doing this.

Usually, for a hickey, Link assumes there would be some kind of lead-up, making out beforehand, but they’re not doing that. He just… lays down on his bed so Rhett can get the right angle, and Rhett lays down next to him. “So I’ll just, like… suck on your neck until there’s a mark, and then it’s all done. It shouldn’t take long, I don’t think.” Link’s nervous, his palms sweating and his body feeling like it’s vibrating. He knows this isn’t the same as a girl giving him one, but the sensation is all the same, right? And Rhett’s Rhett… someone he trusts wholeheartedly. He likes his best friend. Maybe even more than he’d like a girl. He doesn’t say any of that, not when Rhett leans in and presses his lips to his neck. Not when Rhett starts to lick at and suck on his skin, nice and wet. The sound is obscene, and Link drapes his hands over himself to make sure Rhett doesn’t see the effect it has on him. He leans his head back to give Rhett more room, and Rhett rests a hand on his chest for a better angle, and this feels so intensely intimate. Link wills away that thought, knowing that this is transactional. Today, Rhett is helping him. Maybe down the road, he’ll help Rhett. It doesn’t  _ mean  _ anything, but it feels like it does.

When Rhett pulls away, it feels too soon. Link hopes that it didn’t take, that Rhett has to do this all over again to make it look good. Rhett runs his fingers over the mark, and Link knows this is over, but Rhett furrows his brow. “I think maybe if you just go in with one, they’ll think you’re faking. We better add one more just in case.” He leans back down, tongue and lips and teeth and suction, working on Link’s neck to make a second mark, near but not on top of the first one. Link’s breath hitches. He’s trying to focus, that this is just for show, that this isn’t meant to feel like anything between them, but it does. Butterflies feel like too mild a term for what he feels in his stomach. The sensation is more like bats or parrots or something so much bigger. When Rhett pulls again, Link feels a sense of loss. “How do I look?” he breathes out.

“I think this is good,” Rhett says.

Rhett grazes his fingers over the marks there again, and Link gets goosebumps. He hopes Rhett doesn’t notice them. He looks up at him. “So that’s it? I’m all done?”

“Yeah, man. I think so. Go check them out in the mirror.”

Link nods, but standing up is hard. He feels all wobbly and unstable. When he looks, they look amazing, way more realistic than some of the others he’s seen, which makes him wonder how many of the guys on the team are lying, how many went for other methods like curling irons or something. He touches the marks on his neck and turns to Rhett. “Thanks, man,” he says. “They look great.”

“You might want to put on a turtleneck or something before your mom gets home,” Rhett recommends. And just like that, the moment is over, and Rhett’s opening his mouth to say, “shoot, I gotta get home for dinner or my mom’s gonna kill me.” Within seconds, Link is alone, and he’s staring in the mirror again, at the remnants of what his best friend did, and a constant reminder of how he’d like it to happen again.

He wears a turtleneck to school the next day. He’s never worn one before. But he needs to keep this mostly private until the right time, and when he gets to the locker room, ready to change before the game, he carefully pulls his shirt off over his head, mussing his hair a little. He glances around, wondering if anyone has noticed yet. No one says anything, so he turns, and he looks at Mark. “Hey, you got any more of that spray ice stuff?”

“Holy shit, man!” Mark says, the second his eyes land on Link, moving down to his neck. “You hooked up!”

A few guys crowd around Link, and he’s overwhelmed with the number of questions. “Who did you make out with?” Dan asks, and Link blushes as he thinks about Rhett’s lips on his neck again, his body responding to the thought quickly.

“Just some girl from the town my dad lives in,” Link says, shrugging. “She came to check out Campbell and I showed her around.” He uses the lie he spent all night rehearsing, the acceptable words that won’t turn heads, and within moments, they’re headed to the pitch to warm up. Link wishes he could say what really happened, that he got it from his best friend. He turns his eyes to the stands, and sees Rhett. He blushes again, and in response, Rhett gives him a small wave.

Nobody needs to know, but Link’s heart flutters, and that in itself is notable for a couple of reasons.


End file.
